


Reverse

by curtailed



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Meteorstuck, Multi, not really shippy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-26 19:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20395105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curtailed/pseuds/curtailed
Summary: A meteor and its 12 inhabitants.





	Reverse

**612,000,000,000 Sweeps**

The meteor is empty nowadays, so you take your usual route around the labs -- doing your best to avoid the common rooms -- and skimming across the transportalizers. Surprisingly you still can't enter any room except yours and Sollux's. His code, he claims, is the strongest thing about him, and you heartily disagree with the statement but you can understand. 

You fly lazily up to the ceiling a bit, letting your wings brush against layers of dust. They shine the same, gossamer red they've always been, spun from silk and as tough as steel. You're not inclined toward suicide, but you did try cutting them open once just to test out if you could. They bleed rust red, fanning across the ground in steady trickles, and the pain had made you pass out in a puddle of your own blood.

It was Vriska that saved you. For a few centuries afterwards you still hated her, but one day she had crawled to you, tears at the edge of her eyes, and pleaded for you not to go, that she would go absolutely batshit insane if she was left to wander the dark hallways herself, watching space and stars fly by. The meteor will never reach its destination.

She's been quite hypocritical.

You still don't know if her death's been Heroic or Just. There is no one to enact it upon her, after all, no outside entity to judge her in the furthest realms of Space, but the day before you remember her walking around with a crumpled picture of Tavros, the image faded into brown smears. She must've _forced_ her death; hell, she probably rolled her dice for it. You scoop up the pieces, now dark and cold, and gently stuff them in your pocket.

You have a corpse party to attend, and you're its only guest.

**41,300,000,000 Sweeps**

You hear Aradia fluttering up to her ceiling -- it's a habit she's never broken, not once during these long sweeps -- and you resist the urge to snark at her.

Being the only two trolls in the middle of fucking nowhere is exhausting. Feferi's long gone, the seadweller reduced to salt and dust.

You're both God-Tiers; you have no urge to eat, drink, or shit, and judging by how dusty the food pantry's gotten you reckon she's lost interest in physical things long ago. She mostly relegates herself to orbiting the common room, never entering it, and you know you won't. The blood's been dried up and the bodies are mostly bone, but they'll still be arranged in that morbid circular ring she's got in her head several millennia ago.

"Mutual kill," you once say to her, both of you perched at the edge of the meteor. You understand the "God" aspect more clearly than you ever; you circumvent biology, physics, all methods of rationality. You can _breathe in space._

"Let's find a planet," you go on when she doesn't respond. "I'll attempt to kill the denizens. You stop me. Your death will be Heroic, mine Just, and we can both see our quadrantmates again." Your heart literally collapses when you think of Terezi, that stupid sack of fiery bones, and then you think of Tavros, how soft and pliant and nice he was, and you turn your face away.

"Vriska," she says, and you fondly remember the day she had screamed at you in a horrible, insane voice as her metal fingers had wrapped around your throat. Just kidding, you're glad no one ever brings up that day around you. "We've been traveling for 60, 500, 372, 089 sweeps. We will never, ever see another sign of life."

"Maybe -- "

"It shouldn't take a psychic to tell you this," she speaks, as kindly as ever.

Sometimes you fight. You're a highblood; the urge to wreck shit never leaves your bones, even when you grab her by the hood and try to sever her in two. She carries a whip with her, and it slides uselessly off your sword when you roll your die, the eights perfect and gleaming, leaving smoky cerulean trails in the air. 

You're not vindicating her. You're not avenging her. There is no merit in her death; in minutes she shimmers and rises from the floor, still complacent. Almost docile.

Once, however, she reminds of you of her robot form.

You had barged in on her in the yellowblood's room, cradling a -- you couldn't fucking believe it -- a _stuffed_ bee, and some fucking how it's been preserved. It's the ugliest blend of yellow and black, with red and blue wings, and then you realize what you've brought on yourself when you pull out your die and demand a duel.

She froze you instead.

Her powers, you've learned, are fairly passive -- she's still formidable, but she doesn't do melee.

Passive, however, doesn't mean weak.

It's the kind of "passive" power that keeps true gods trapped, the kind that would make you smile if you weren't -- fucking -- 

trapped

you know she's forgotten about you the second she wanders out of the room. Maybe she just intended to hold you there for a few minutes. You figured she still has the little sadist streak, and you'll be spending some happy hours hovering at the door's threshold, unable to tear your gaze from the wall. Or move at all, really.

When she remembers you exist, you're released and within moments sobbing wildly, even as she pulls you in her lap and apologizes, her voice cracking, how she's _so fucking sorry_ and the swear word is so jarring, so _unlike_ her, and you're afraid to ask how long she trapped you.

10,250 sweeps.

Not the worst you've been through, all and all.

**4,130 Sweeps**

It's a little awkward to be near Aradia or Vriska; you don't have much to say to them, they have near nothing to say to you, and you three tend to stay out of each other's paths. You can't find comfort in these hallways. Nothing reminds you of the sea, nothing reminds you of Alternia -- it's all stark metal, harsh lines, where once it was alight with voices.

You prefer Aradia's company when you do seek them out. Once, you muse, trolls would be absolutely _enraged_ to see the heiress sit next to a rustblood, but then again those trolls are dead. Everyone's dead. For all that you know, you are the only living things that have ever existed.

"I'm surprised you haven't killed yourself," she starts, a casual line to a casual conversation. "You, at least, can get the comfort that you will have a definite end."

"Shoald I?"

"Are you afraid?"

You're not, you realize. If death means what you think it means -- if those transparent, shimmering bubbles didn't lie, those places the meteor's left behind so long ago -- then it'd be heaven. You get to -- well -- you get to _sea_ everyone. 

You get to see Eridan again. Maybe you can feel the ocean again, cool and calm against your gills, and you can pretend that you haven't spent thousands of sweeps with only echoes in the corridors. 

"Not reelly," you say.

Something glimmers in Aradia's eyes, and her hand closes around yours, patting your bracelets briefly. All of the trolls' colors are stamped on them.

"It'll just be me and Vriska for a while, then," she says, a silent plea in her voice.

You stick around a little.

**1,025 Sweeps**

It's been a little awkward between you and Fef, recently, when she found you in your pile of wands sobbing hysterically in your cape and you had screamed at her to fuck off. You apologize to her in the food block, and she tells you that she doesn't care.

"Fef -- "

"Not as in I don't care about you, Eridan," she says, cupping your face, "but all of this -- it's been too lonely. I don't think I can last long."

"Don't give up on yourself," you plead. "You can still chat with Ara or Vris, they'll be sticking around -- "

"Knot the same," she whispers.

You understand her perfectly. There's no day or night here, the air's too damn dry, and you both lay in a pile and listen to the ventilations whir. No one prowls the vents these days; Gamzee had actually crawled out into the open air to die. Subconsciously, you listen for voices, and then you have to suppress the urge to tear your horns apart because _there's no one there._ There's never been anyone there.

"We'll reach the new world," you say to her, and even after these sweeps you still suck shit as a moirail, but for once it works. She rests in your arms, a sweet smile across her face, and you know you'll break if you lose her.

**612 Sweeps**

The vents taste like shit.

Distantly, you make out voices rapping their natural rhyme -- there's the spider-girl's high cackles, the quasi-Empress's breezy giggles, the violet douche's affronted tone, the red maid's quiet words, always cutting through the rest. She knows the deal with time, that you've never been going anywhere and you never will, because there's no journey when there isn't an end.

Mother_fuckers_.

They call out for you occasionally, demand you to drag your "festered, diseased-riddenass_"_ out of the shafts and eat an actual meal with them. You decline as politely as you can. You do sneak out the shafts, when the lights are all fuzzy, and maybe squeeze a horn or two. You always try to enter the common room -- Tavbro's corpse is still there, so is Karbro's, and who says you can't have a one-sided slam contest? No fucking one. You should do that.

The red maid always stops you, though.

"Trust me, you don't want to go in there," she says, her wings vibrating a teeny bit.

"And why the motherfucking not?"

"You don't," she says quietly. "None of you should."

"You go in there all the time. Look, I want to meet up with some motherfuckers and talk with them, is that too big of a deal?"

"You shouldn't," she repeats, and by the strangest miracles you decide to listen to her. You don't leave the shafts for some time, letting out the stray honk or so to inform them you're alive and kicking.

**413 Sweeps**

You restart your hobby for building robots again. The task relaxes you, with how you must dilute your own strength to conduct the most intricate of processes -- wires and gears, the things that give the body life. Easily fixable. Easily replaceable.

Then when you seethe, you tear them into pieces.

It is uncomfortable talking to others, the seadwellers, the purpleblood, the ceruleanblood, and Aradia; they have long ceased viewing your sweating glands as disgusting, tolerating it with mild annoyance, but the simple fact is that there is not much to speak of. What conversation can you bring up that won't tear into private things? Anything reminding you of friendship will remind you of Nepeta.

Once you considered building their bodies again. After all, their brains are composed of the same layout as your machines -- surely you can build them back to life, have some semblance of your friends prowl again around the lab.

You build Nepeta first.

The model is crude. In another time, it will be efficient, and you would have gone through the procedure, but you tear your abomination into pieces. You drop this project afterwards. 

You convene with Aradia occasionally; long have you dropped your concupiscent affairs, and now you are on more cordial terms. She reminisces the time she beat the droppings out of you and gives you half an apology. You give her the other half of installing the heart in the first place.

Mostly, you gently hold Nepeta's helmet in your palm. You never dare cracking it. The day you do, you think, you will truly die.

**205 Sweeps**

Conducting a trial without witnesses loses its punch. Vriska still lingers around, pretending to be the doomed defendant, until one day you hear the rustling of a noose around a neck.

"Vriska, what the hell are you doing?"

"Dying," she says.

In your haste to save her, you accidentally stab her -- for one true, horrifying moment you think she's gone, the absence of breaths palpable, but then she springs back from the puddle of blood as if nothing happened. She must've have seen your expression, because next thing you know you feel her stroking your horns.

"I won't do that again," she tells you, hugging you close.

You meet up in the food block. None of you really go into the common room anymore; too many memories linger, sharp and acidic in the air. You don't think of Karkat. You sit your rear down on the table, listen to Eridan and Feferi bicker, hear Equius's grunt of distaste as Gamzee drapes over him, hear Aradia quietly laugh. You always sit adjacent to Vriska. You run your hand over her wings -- wings that taste and smell like deep blueberry -- and you dread the day you won't be able to touch them again.

But for now, you can turn your faces toward the stars; the meteor is near its end of the trajectory. It has to be. One day you will arrive to your new home, and all of you can die.

You have to smile at that.

**102 Sweeps**

It's a strange balance of content and wistfulness as you sit in the common room. No one occupies it but you; you thumb through your stash of rainbow drinker literature, remembering Karkat's glee when he had shoved them in your arms. Outside, you can still here your ex-moirail and her giggling legislacerator horsing around, accompanied by intense shooshpaps that make you blush jade.

Your hatred for Gamzee has abated. It's pointless; there's no benefit of ending his life, even if he attacked your friends so long ago -- so many sweeps. Meaningless.

Empty.

For now, you can only look forward to the new world. You imagine it sometimes; will it be light and airy, like spun confections, or will it be sweeps of unharvested land? Maybe a bit of all. It will have old ruins for Aradia to indulge, perhaps dragging Equius along, the beachside for Gamzee to lounge, the open vastness for Feferi and Eridan to swim about. Terezi and Vriska will prowl the overlying salt cliffs, toeing the edge of danger.

You will sit in a bright clearing and lie among soft grass.

**61 Sweeps**

A good little roleplay never hurts anyone; that's why you find yourself hanging upside down from a shelf, rolling your eyes as Equius tries to shoo you.

"No," he starts.

This can go on all day. Or journey, you think. "Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Equius, come oooon." You giggle, watching his face turn bluer. "You're booored. There is catically nothing fur you to do!"

"I can build robots," he grunts, but he finally settles down under your swinging arms.

You'll have to make this session quick. Something thumps in the walls -- Gamzee, you think with a shudder -- and a few crashes come from the common room. Probably Kanaya finding Aradia rearranging the corpses again. Terezi and Vriska will probably be cooking, and you shudder even worse. As for the seadwellers, you like to think they're doing the same thing as you and your moirail: letting out their stresses in the most unconventional methods possible.

Your sessions adjourns, but not before you hold out your thumb and index. Equius, despite his grumbling, doesn't hesitating in holding out his own fingers, completing the diamond. Wherever you go, it will be unbreakable, just like it should be.

**41 Sweeps**

"Check it out, AA," you say, gesturing to your computers. "Ith thith not the actual shit?"

"You're pointing to your computers."

"Fuck yeah I'm pointing to my computerth." You don't use your bees anymore; too much nosy fuckers burrowing around and getting into places they shouldn't be. Traditional mainframes also work fine under your touch. "They're portable, too. You know what that meanth?"

"Nope," she says, a bit of a smile playing around her mouth. 

"It meanth," you whisper conspirationally, "I can bring them onto the new world. And I can thet up a thtem acroth planetth -- we'll all be able to talk wherever we are."

"You're really excited for this."

How could you not be? You would never admit, but talking to the others is how you can fill the holes left behind. You will never forget your best friend's face, the resting bitch-expression it perpetually was, and you'll never see his trollhandle light up again. But you still have others. You have Feferi to talk to, Eridan to snipe at, Vriska to argue, Equius to prod, Nepeta to joke with. You can play some lighthearted game with Nepeta, and you can sit peaceably with Kanaya. Hell, the rhythm of Gamzee thumping around the vents will never fade away, even if it reminds of the hollowness that had been Tavros.

"I'm excited," Aradia tells you, curling an arm around your waist.

You sink into a pile of computer parts and proceed to have the palest make-out session possible. You touch her wings, her curling horns, her face. There's always a little nagging voice in the back of your mind -- the voice that tells you that you'll never see the world, that no one will -- but you squish it under a pile of confidence. For once, something's going right in your life, and you intend to stay that way.

**25 Sweeps**

"I thought I told you not to go into the vents," you say to Gamzee.

In his pile of horns, he's busy licking sopor off his fingers. "None did, Tavbro. Your ears up and making some false noise."

"I saw you crawl out the vent."

"Wanted to see you." He pats the space beside him; grudgingly, you curl up next to him, his pants saggy against your metal legs. 

"I thought you were lost."

"I'm sorry, motherfucker." You bury your face in his hair, breathing in the smell of paint and faint sopor. A horn squeaks under you.

"Just -- don't do that. I'm worried for you."

"I won't do it, while you're here." His grin is lopsided and messy but it still warms your heart. He's been a wreck since Karkat died, the diamond breached and severed, and sometimes you fill pale with him too. For the most part, though, you -- for once -- feel the utmost confidence in calling him your matesprit. Both of you do. Vriska is a friend now, although still filled with her points and jabs, but Terezi reels the worst back just like a good moirail. 

"I'm thinking," he says, brushing your horns, "we should have a good motherfucking supper tonight. Just celebrate the event. Invite everyone -- drag the bee boy from his room, get his moirail to tag along, get the cat girl and _her_ motherfucking moirail out and we can have some good jams."

"Don't forget the seadwellers," you remind him.

"Didn't." His hands slip under your shirt, so you forget on his behalf. You warm yourself with the thought that on the new world, you will enjoy his touch for a long time, hear your friends' voices sweep across the land. 

**0 Sweeps**

"Listen the FUCK up," you bellow, trying to balance on the podium. "I've got a sack of shitty news, a sack of good news, and no gogdamn in-betweens."

The room is absolutely silence.

You trace your gaze over each of them -- Aradia, in her quiet finery, Tavros, shy with wide eyes, Sollux, stupidly sniggering with his stupid lisp, Nepeta, smiling so wide you can see the back of her tongue, Kanaya, prim and well-dressed as always, Terezi, baring you a mouthful of pointy teeth, Vriska, pretending to fall asleep, Equius, rubbing his fists nervously as sweat trickles down his neck, Gamzee, still looking like someone just fed him sopor, Eridan, pompously pointing his nose in the air, Feferi, nearly bouncing in her seat in excitement.

You felt like you just got through a list.

These are your fucking _friends_, dammit. Some of you have committed horrible shit. Some of you have nearly killed each other. But each of you went through the Game -- beat the Boss with your bare hands -- and you all deserve a reward.

All of you.

You flail your arms a bit.

"Bad news," you holler. "We're still being sent to our world via meteor. We're going through the outer edges of the cosmos. I don't fucking know when we'll get there. It won't be in a day or two; hell, it might be several fucking perigees."

The room groans collectively.

"Good news," you continue. "We will _get there_. Since my luck is abysmally shitty, I'll probably not live to see it -- "

Kanaya shoots you a poisonous look.

"I _will_ live to see it," you rectify, and the room mockingly cheers. You flip everyone the finger. "Fuck you, fuck all of you. Best case scenario: I wake up to this ugly piece of shit slowing down at paradise-know-it-all, and all of your ugly asses will be happily playing through diabetes-infused meadows. Worst case: I have to put up with your shit for another fucking moment."

Someone catcalls.

"Meeting dismissed, assholes." They clear out the room faster than a swarm of flies; Gamzee remains to rub at your horn, and Terezi plants a sloppy kiss against your cheek before laughingly departing. 

You can't wait for your new home.

**Author's Note:**

> a couple
> 
> pretty sure even highblood trolls can't live that long, but i gotta use the arc numbers
> 
> also, in this au the game still happened but there wasn't that cycle of flarp revenge, and ofc there wasn't gamzee's and eridan's murder spree
> 
> working on a super longstory, decided to pull this one out for side orders


End file.
